


Two Sides.

by spooningwithisa (upriserseven)



Category: Florence + the Machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:39:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upriserseven/pseuds/spooningwithisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two sides of the same story. Two outcomes of the same night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I've Got More Give Than a Bale of Hay

How could I be so stupid? The past ten years I’ve watched her flit lover to lover (does she even know she inspired those words? Does she have a clue?) I’ve watched her take numbers down in her phone and delete them the next day, watched her forget names and faces and eventually even numbers. I’ve spent ten - count them, ten - years watching her never stick around. Why could I possibly think it would be any different?

The trouble is that I can’t even take the steps. I can’t hate her and then pity her and forgive her when I’m still going to see her face every day. It’s impossible, I’ve established, to feel truly heartbroken when those eyes are looking at you like there’s nothing wrong at all. To ever really feel like you’ve been torn apart by somebody you still love with everything you have, because they’re still your best friend, still your constant. She’s still my rock, even if it feels like she’s shifted just a little.

And I can’t decide if she’s playing dumb, or she really doesn’t get it. But she’s sitting ten feet away from me, and I see that this one is next. She laughs too loudly, she smiles too broadly, there’s too many ‘accidental’ brushes and dear God, she’s not even subtle. When I think of it, it’s always stung just a little. I have to laugh at myself in the past, just that little bit offended that Isa wanted to fuck everybody but me. I want to go back and shake her, and tell her it’s a good thing. Trust me, past-Florence, you don’t want this. You won’t be any different. You’ll be left alone in a bed that’s too big, just like the others.

She’s smiling at me the same way she always has. Like nothing’s changed. I suppose nothing has, for her. I’m not sure if I think she’s always known this was going to happen, or she just doesn’t care that it has, but I know she’s the same Isa she always has been. I feel shaky and sick and I like I don’t want to be anywhere near her right now. I’m uncomfortable, and I’m running out of places to hide it. I’m running out of places to hide, full stop. This doesn’t feel like me. But I suppose it is, now. Until I figure this out, until I can determine what happened and why the hell I thought I was so special that I wouldn’t get burned (and why, in fact, I wasn’t special, not even a little bit), I’ve just got to smile and act like everything’s okay. Everything’s fine.

What the fuck was I thinking?


	2. Six Months

It’s far easier than they’d ever imagined, living this far apart. Of course, they lie awake some nights, missing each other and wondering why they ever thought they could start their relationship on opposite ends of the world, but they both have to admit they feel a stronger sense of belonging than ever before. Teamed with the fact that Isa’s taken more trips to London in the first three months than she’d initially planned for the whole year; the fact that they’ve been unable to resist booking a few shows and getting to work on the new album four months early, it’s easy to forget they’re living on different continents. Only the emptiness of Isa’s flat and the goodbyes at the airport remind them.

They’d never planned on this, on falling in love, but when they look back they realise it was inevitable. That it probably happened far earlier than they knew, than they could pinpoint even know. Isa can’t help but think that she should’ve picked up on it sooner (she’s far more level-headed than Florence, she knows that, but maybe love really does make you blind. Even to love itself.)

It’s an unoriginal love, really. It’s the biggest cliché in the book, falling in love with your best friend. Sometimes Florence thinks that’s why it makes her feel giddy, why it makes her weak in the knees. She’s spent her whole life looking for the extraordinary, worshipping the peculiar and never managing to be quite as straightforward as people would like her to be. But here, this, it’s simple and it’s normal and she knows that’s why she cherishes Isa the way she does. She once told an interviewer that Isabella was her most prized possession, and it’s always been true. She knows she doesn’t own Isa, but that doesn’t mean Isa isn’t hers. And she is Isa’s. It turns out love really is easy; she really doesn’t need to think so far out of the box.

Isa would never have thought that Florence could be so sensible, so willing to let her head rule and not her heart, but whenever Isa wants to come home permanently, she’s stopped. The voice on the other end of the phone, out of her computer, simply playing in her mind when she reads texts or e-mails, isn’t this grown-up, elegant Florence her publicist has turned her into, it’s Flo. Flo who drops her ‘t’s, the typical London girl who Isa met years ago, while she was still making tiny people to put in jars and displaying them proudly in her bedroom. And when Isa tells her she’s not sure she can be in LA, be so far away from Florence when they should be embracing the beginning of their relationship, Florence very calmly tells her that if she wastes this year on their relationship, which will still be there waiting in 2014, 2015 and for the rest of their lives, she’ll regret it. She’ll still be there, and so will London, when Isa gets back. And Isa has to laugh because she doesn’t even miss London. She hasn’t thought about her studio, Crystal Palace or the terrible weather. She just misses Florence. She wonders how much past-Isa would mock her for considering her girlfriend her home. So cheesy, Isa.

That’s what it all lies on, really. Isa’s never been the ‘in love’ type. She’s had relationships, she’s even loved people, but she’s never been affectionate, never thought of herself as that kind of girlfriend. And now she finds herself thinking about how she doesn’t really feel, unless she’s with Florence. She knew, she really knew, how she felt when she found herself saying Florence had “stolen her heart.” She still hasn’t really forgiven herself for being a person who says things like that, for the grin that appears against her will when she hears Florence’s name or sees her face or even just thinks about her. She’s not really sure that she’s okay with the fact that she loses herself (and her ability to think straight) when they kiss, or the fact that every phone call predictably ends with “I love you”, “I love you harder.” All she knows is that she’s gone. She’s completely, head-over-heels in love. The kind of love she didn’t think really existed. She’s gone, and she knows Florence is too.


End file.
